811.20 Defense (M) Turkey/838: Telegram
The Chargé in Turkey (Kelley) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 19—11:49 p.m.]
1720. My 1714, October 18. I had a lengthy conversation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs this morning relative to the agreement with the Germans for delivery of an additional 135,000 tons of chrome. He said that the agreement would probably be signed today. He had made it a point of keeping the agreement on a technical basis and it would be signed by the Eti Bank with the appropriate German authorities. He said that the Germans originally had demanded that provision be made for the delivery of chrome at the rate of 20,000 tons a month. He had refused to include in the agreement any stipulation as to the amount of chrome to be delivered monthly and he made it clear to the Germans that the maximum delivery possible under any circumstances was 7000 tons a month and that on account of transportation and mining difficulties the delivery of the 135,000 tons of chrome could not be completed in less than 20 months which mean that the deliveries would carry over at least to the middle of 1942 [1945?].
I inquired as to the war material which the Germans agree to deliver in return for the 135,000 tons of chrome and pointed out that the Clodius Agreement provided that the chrome was to be delivered to Germany in return for “new war material” to be agreed upon between the two Governments. Numan stated that it had been decided in agreement with the British Ambassador that the war material delivered under the Armament Credit should constitute the quid pro quo for the 135,000 tons of chrome.
This decision had been made in our interest because it made the delivery of the 135,000 tons of chrome dependent upon the delivery of 100,000,000 marks of war material instead of 20,000,000 marks the amount corresponding to the value of the chrome. As it was expected at the time that the Germans would be unable or unwilling to deliver entire 100,000,000 marks of war material it was believed this arrangement would result in reducing and delaying delivery of chrome to Germany. More important was fact that tying up of delivery of 135,000 tons with war material delivered under 100,000,000 marks Armament Credit relieved Turkey of necessity of delivering any products to Germany for 2 years in repayment of Armament Credit.
The service of armament credit amounted to 6,750,000 Turk pounds a year which were to be transferred by export to Germany, Turk products specified in schedule I of Clodius Agreement. 135,000 tons of chrome would be used to effect this service. Numan said he was [Page 1166] convinced if additional military equipment were stipulated as quid pro quo for 135,000 tons Germany would deliver material in question in a very short time. Having delivered almost 100,000,000 marks in a few months it would not be difficult for Germany to deliver 20,000,000 marks additional. In such event Turkey would be obliged to deliver to Germany during next 2 years in addition to 135,000 tons, 13,500,000 Turk pounds of Turk products such as copper, cotton, oil seeds, et cetera, which he was certain we did not want Germany to obtain. Under present arrangement Turkey was obligated to furnish Germany only 135,000 tons of chrome. He hoped I would make situation clear to Washington.
Numan went on to say that the American Government could rely upon him to delay and reduce the deliveries of chrome to Germany so that the monthly average would be as low as possible, notwithstanding the fact that Germany had delivered to Turkey 25 locomotives and 250 freight cars to be used in moving chrome. I said that my Government was interested in chrome from two points of view. First, we desired chrome for supply reasons. It looked now as if it would be impossible for us to obtain any newly mined chrome. I said that our stocks of high grade chrome in Turkey are getting very low and that the movement of our chrome was slowing up. Practically nothing was being moved for our account from Guleman. We desired to obtain newly mined chrome and we resented being excluded from Turkish production. We felt that we should obtain at least as much as Germany. He said that it was his intention to endeavor to arrange for our obtaining some of the current production, and in respect of Guleman he would see what could be done towards increasing the movement of our chrome. I said that in addition to obtaining chrome for our own, needs we were vitally interested in preventing Germany from obtaining chrome. We would like to have chrome deliveries to Germany reduced to a nominal amount. During the first 9 months of this year Germany had obtained about 23,000 tons of chrome and it now appeared that Germany would get much more than twice that amount during the next 9 months. This probability could not but cause grave concern in Washington. He said we could rely upon him to see that this did not happen. He would utilize every means possible to reduce and slow up deliveries. He thought that he might be able to keep the deliveries during the next 9 months down to the level of the past 9 months. It was his intention to reduce deliveries, specially during the next few months, because after that “perhaps communications between Turkey and Germany might be interrupted”.